a day of a different flavor
This is now the day after a not so small mini-meetup in Santa Monica, CA.
I get up from being out not too late...about 3am returning home.
The usual stuff happens...breakfast, shower.....the usual stuff.
I call over to Eli.....he is soon to be a Californian by proxy, but still new to the California group of TravBuddies. I call him up. No answer, just left a message. I wanted to see what he was doing. He hadn't been to Los Angeles ever before. He called me back shortly saying that he had just come in from being out and walking around and that he was packing up his stuff so that he could check out and meet up with Alina and Jenn (Jenn79 would be taking them around and to lunch). He told me that I should come along.
There was much traffic on the fine Saturday afternoon. I drove the 5 to the 605 to the 91 to the 710 to 10 and finally still got cought. Already running late....I decided to get off of the highway and navigate by street in the direction I thought they would all be. I got lucky....when I was out with Kelly for the pillow fight (see other blog), we passed Little Tokyo so I had a great idea where to go.
Where I got off the highway was not as far as I thought it would have been or even that out of the way for that matter. I was now in Little Tokyo right beside downtown Los Angeles.
Found parking and made a sprint to meet up with my friends.
There they are....I found them.
Now as a group, it is food time. But wait...they have had pinkberry....I know this because Jenn is the only one still eating her Coffee flavored yogurt. She offers it to me (seems like I have known her forever)....I can't resist. The coffee flavored yogurt was good.
We walk towards a sushi restaurant that Jenn has been to. It is closed. We walk again. Here we are in front of a Shabu Shabu restaurant and after just a little deliberation, we go in. Never going to this type of restaurant.
We look at our menus....a little discussion happening. All decide that the beef would be best except for me. I opt for the chicken.
The young lady serving us, comes out and adjusts our table. She turns the table into a stove, then brings a pot out with a little seasoning or something in the water a puts the water to boil. Oh, we are making soup! Well not really, we didn't have any spoons. Only chopstix!
She brings out some sauces for our meat and vegetables.....She brings out our vegetables and finally some very, very, very thinly sliced meat.
We proceed to cook our soup.....that we can't drink.
I add all of my vegetables to the pot. If we are making soup the soup should be well seasoned. Then we add our meat a little at a time.
The food was tasty, although they did make us work for our meal.
Great job to Jenn for finding us a wonderful restaurant, Way To Go Eli....for using the chopstix!
I had a great time with Alina, Jenn and Eli.....I had to go. I had to get to a retirement party in another part of town.....
.....but wait, is it not over? Jenn has to put more coins in the meter. She leaves all of us at a shop saying we should by some things to remember the day and she would be right back. Eli and I walk in to find Alina....no such luck, we look around, we see nothing to buy and still can't find Alina. We walk out. There she is....she says that Jenn went in looking for us, so we go back in and no Jenn. We come out to find Jenn giving Alina and then us some funny looking balls. Turns out that Jenn was so kind and wanted us to experience more....she bought us some Mochi (ice cream in a rice covering)....very good. Such a wonderful way to finish the afternoon.
I walk them back to Jenn's car and say my goodbyes. They went on to do somemore sightseeing, I rushed home yet again through LA traffic.
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